Ryan Fishman: Republican Party must get back to roots - and out of our bedrooms

June 2, 2013

RyanFishman

By Ryan Fishman

Detroit Free Press guest writer

Growing up, I always believed in individual liberty and personal freedoms. I even remember the exact moment I knew I was a Republican. It was Sept. 11, 2001, and a kid watched his president address a nation in crisis. In that moment, George W. Bush seemed larger than life, and I was captivated. The next day, I begged my mother for her credit card so I could go online and make a donation to the Republican National Committee.

I still can’t quite explain it, but as long as I’ve understood politics, there’s always been something about the GOP’s platform that just made sense. Ronald Reagan embraced a conservatism that empowered the individual and embraced limited government, a balanced budget and an unmistakable military advantage that protected our national security interests.

Today, the Republican Party embraces far-reaching policies that reflect a paternalism once reserved for Democrats. The notion that government can and should legislate what two people do in the privacy of their own home makes me think twice about whether the Grand Old Party still reflects the same principles that lured in a 13-year-old ready to take on the world.

The quandary is that today’s independent voter choosing between Democrats and Republicans can’t choose between big and small government. Substantively, the concept of limited government is absent from the Republican agenda, while the term is bandied about by ideologues deriding Democrats for the same bloated government that they themselves have embraced.

So in reality, the choice for voters is between two forms of paternalism. Republican paternalism is driven by the imposition of religion and moralistic ideology, veiled as political “principle” and values. Democratic paternalism, misguided as it may be, seems to reflect an inherent desire to do “the right thing.” While the road to hell has always been paved with these kinds of good intentions, bleeding money for the sake of protecting our country’s most vulnerable citizens may be more attractive than compounding a deficit and mortgaging our country’s future merely because we feel the urge to legislate from the pulpit.

So-called Republicans keep talking about individual liberty and personal freedoms, but there’s no substance. They label conservatives who believe in the principles that once defined our platform as “RINOs” or “Democrat Lite,” but fail to recognize the moral majority was not always the conservative base. There was a time when Republicans espoused Keynesian economics and the Democrats captivated Catholic voters.

Eliminating waste, cutting taxes and enabling entrepreneurship to create jobs and industry once stood as the pillars of the Republican Party. Now, we can’t negotiate a balanced budget or end sequestration because we can’t stop worrying about what two people might do when they go home at night. Drop “traditional marriage” from the platform. Stop fighting Roe v. Wade. It’s not a compromise of values; it’s merely an embrace of the reality that these beliefs have a place in our homes and our churches, and not in a meaningful political discourse where they are a nonstarter for a majority of moderate and independent voters.

Some Republicans warn that ignoring moral values will drive away the party’s base. I worry instead that if we ignore our roots, we’re doomed to lose the conservative principles that once made us successful. Return to the conservatism that made the Republican Party great, and we can be great again.

Ryan Fishman of Birmingham describes himself as lifelong Republican who grew up in a family of Democrats. He is the vice president of strategic consultation at Steward Media.